Welcome back to the second half of our look at the interim arcs of the Sonic 3 & Knuckles adaptation! Last time we travelled with Sonic and Amy Rose to the Marble Garden Zone, escaped the newly-revealed secret headquarters of Sonic & company as BigArms smashed the place to pieces, and did some gambling with the Mario Marxio Brothers in the Carnival Night Zone. However we’ve got much more ground to cover, so let’s get started!

You’ve waited over a year for it, but it’s here: the second part of possibly Sonic the Comic’s best story arc, that of Sonic 3 and Knuckles. However, I’m teasing a bit, sorry! The build-up to the final conclusion to the game’s story (which by 16-bit Sonic standards, was quite involved) took a couple of months, presumably to stretch out the material as much as possible before the next game came out. As such, we got a few shorter arcs before the final main story started, and that’s what we’ll be looking at today & next week, covering the final conclusion in Part 6 – simply as you miss things otherwise. Hey, don’t look so sad, you there at the back – there’s some fun stuff here. Think of these as an early Christmas present!

Today is October the 18th, which exactly 17 years ago, on Oct 18th 1994, saw a simultaneous US & EU release of Sonic & Knuckles, finally completing the half-finished game Sonic 3 that Sega had released earlier in the year. With the upcoming Sonic Generations featuring at least 2 S&K levels, it’s nice to look back and reflect on what was arguably the highest point the franchise has reached to date, in terms of the crap-to-crud ratio of titles available; and the completion of the final of the 4 main Mega Drive/Genesis titles.

So, discuss! I remember S&K being the closest to launch I’d ever owned any Sonic title to that point – I THINK I got it as an Xmas present rather than actually buying it outright (£45 or so was a lot of money to a 9 year old in 1994), though. I remember spending hours Locking-On random Mega Drive games to it and playing their special stages, as well as being amazed at how Knuckles could be shoved into Sonic 2, a game that had been out nearly 2 years by that point.